Cornelius Washington hasn't experienced anything like the death threats that Tennessee Titans tight end Delanie Walker said he got for defending his team's decision to skip the national anthem, and no one he knows has been denied work, like his Detroit Lions teammate, Akeem Spence, said happened to his father, over his decision to kneel for the song.
But Washington said he has experienced harassment and a barrage of racial slurs for their peaceful protest before last Sunday's loss to the Atlanta Falcons.
"I got a few things on my social media," Washington said Friday. "People have their own opinions, but my thing about it is, for me personally, y'all are griping the same way we're griping so why does one person or one group, or this person or that group, why does their opinion matter more than the next man?
"That's my biggest thing about it. Everybody, that's what free speech is about. You should be able to feel a certain way however it is that you feel, not have any backlash about it."
Washington was one of eight Lions who took a knee during the singing of the anthem last week while locking arms with most of the rest of their teammates.
Tight end Eric Ebron stood apart from the group in his own form of protest.
Spence, who was not available for interviews during Friday's open locker room period, tweeted Thursday that his father was denied contract work because of his protest.
Washington said he wasn't aware of his defensive linemate's tweet, but said, "Oh wow," when told the story.
"I heard about it," Ebron said. "Everybody has their own views upon things, so it hurts. I know it hurts Akeem Spence's dad for something that he's done, but everybody has their own view of things and the only thing we can do is we can just pray and just hope his family is OK. I know work is hard to find at any level, so I just hope everything's all right."
Washington said he heard "the normal racial slurs" among other feedback through social media after he decided to kneel for the anthem.
"You ought to be fired, you ought to be cut," Washington said. "I had a couple guys that said something about like being glad that I'm going to have CTE later on in life, that kind of thing."
Asked how he handles such insults, Washington said he typically blocks the offender and moves on.
"Block and keep it moving, that's all," he said. "Easiest thing in the world to do. Cause at this point it doesn't (tick) me off anymore, doesn't make me angry. Like I'm not trying to give my attention to that kind of stuff. It's not worth it. I got more important things to do. it's exactly that. That's my exact thing. I have more important things to do." Ebron said "the only blowback I've gotten (from last week is about) that piss-poor game that I've played." But he, too, said he's learned to ignore the insults on social media.
"You really don't care what people say," Ebron said. "This is a free country. Everybody has their own opinions, everybody has their own thoughts, everybody has their own way of life. You can't dictate or you can't make everybody happy."
Lions coach Jim Caldwell said he did not want to talk about Spence's tweet when asked Friday, but he said Spence are others are built to handle many of the "difficult circumstances" they face.
"This is something that's unprecedented," Caldwell said. "Obviously, it hasn't happened before so there's not a whole lot you can say about it. So like I said, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about that."
Washington said the Lions still have not decided what form if any their protests will take going forward, and that they intend to "have some actions on the back end to backup what we're doing on the front end."
"We've had a lot of discussion about it as a team cause whatever we do, we want to do it as a team," Washington said. "And that's very important to us. But we also don't want to be distracted, cause at the end of the day, we're still out there to win games. We're out there to play and win games. So not saying that we don't care, because obviously we do care, but there's a lot of different people on this team and we don't want to be divided in anything that we do. But I think that's the point of it. I think all this stuff that's going on right now, it's meant to divide us and we're trying to bring everybody together."
